


A Badly Broken Code

by Chrome



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: (for now) - Freeform, Alive Cole Anderson, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Criminals, Alternate Universe - No Androids (Detroit: Become Human), Alternate Universe - Organized Crime, Alternate universe - Mafia, Angst, Assassin Nines, Betrayal, Case Fic, Connor & Upgraded Connor | RK900 are Siblings, Crime Boss Amanda (Detroit: Become Human), Discussion of Child Murder (but no actual child murder (yet)), Dysfunctional Family, Emotional Hurt, F/M, Gen, Good Parent Hank Anderson, Mystery, Organized Crime, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Alternating, POV Connor (Detroit: Become Human), POV Hank Anderson, POV Third Person, POV Upgraded Connor | RK900, Thriller, Upgraded Connor | RK900 Has a Different Name
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-10-19 11:35:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17600579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chrome/pseuds/Chrome
Summary: The Stern Family has ruled the underworld of Detroit with an iron fist for going on half a century. Richard “Nines” Stern has built his reputation as a cold-blooded killer, content to let his soft-spoken but brilliant older brother Connor stand as their adoptive mother Amanda’s successor. The only thorn in his side is Lt. Hank Anderson, one of the few DPD officers who refuses to stop dogging the family’s heels.But everything Nines thought he knew fractures one July night: Anderson manages to dismantle a lucrative red ice ring and Amanda orders six-year-old Cole Anderson killed in response. Charged with planning the deed, Connor inexplicably kills Amanda’s enforcer and flees with the child.It falls to Nines to track down his brother before he can betray the family further—but he has to race against Lt. Anderson, who is determined to save Connor from his fate, as well as Connor, who intends to rip apart as much of the family as he can before he dies—or somehow change his younger brother’s mind.





	1. July 17, 2036 | Richard “Nines” Stern

**Author's Note:**

> Me, about forty-eight hours ago: hahaha here's the summary to a fic I'll never write  
> Me, now: so, anyway...
> 
> Huge thanks to the New ERA Discord server for cheering me on, and especially to both [Estora](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Estora) who is lending me a character and [SkadizzleRoss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkadizzleRoss) who beta-read the first chapter! Special thanks to my professor who made me watch The Godfather a couple weeks ago and is probably indirectly to blame for all this bullshit.

_ July 17, 2036 | Richard “Nines” Stern _

Nines slept through four phone calls and thirty-seven texts. The phone was on, but none of the sounds woke him up; what finally did, maybe twenty minutes after the device went quiet, was what sounded like the gods of hell pounding on the door of his apartment. He practically fell out of bed, pulled the gun from the drawer of his bedside table, and went to the door still shirtless. When he swung it open, he leveled the gun right at the unexpected visitor.

It was Chloe, dressed like she was going to war: heavy boots, motorcycle gloves, what Nines could have sworn was body armor under the windbreaker she was using to keep the rain off. He lowered the weapon.

“What the hell?” he said.

“Answer your goddamn phone,” Chloe snapped. “And let me in. Everything’s gone to shit.”

‘Everything’ had been perfectly fine when Nines had gone to sleep four hours ago. He retreated into the kitchen, followed by Chloe, who didn’t bother to take off her shoes. The clock above the stove said it was 6:45 in the evening. Nines had been planning to just sleep through until the next morning, but that obviously wasn’t going to happen. He took a moment to resign himself to the jetlag and then looked at her. “What happened? Is Mom okay?”

“Amanda’s losing her shit, but she’s fine,” Chloe said.

“Is Connor?” Nines asked.

Chloe grimaced.

Pure, icy fear shot through Nines. “Is Connor hurt?”

“Connor is gone,” Chloe said, finally.

All the blood drained from Nines’ face. “What.”

“Gone. Not dead,” she said, catching his expression. “Not as far as we know. Vanished into thin-fucking-air.”

“Oh,” Nines said. “Maybe something came up. Maybe he texted.” It sounded stupid when he said it, but so did the idea of Connor—predictable, practical Connor—disappearing. He tried to remember where he’d left his phone.

“He didn’t,” Chloe said. “Myers is dead.”

“Myers was gonna—” Things started to click into place. “Fuck. I could have handled it, but Mom wanted Connor to do it. How do you fuck that up? It was a fucking daycare, no security at all—Jesus, Con.”

“Look,” Chloe said. “Don’t say anything about this to anyone except Amanda and Elijah and me unless I say otherwise, okay? We’re letting people think it was the cops, for now.”

“It wasn’t?” That had been Nines’ first thought, that Connor had somehow mistimed it. Like Connor ever mistimed anything. “Is this about Jericho?”

“I don’t think so,” Chloe said, “Although I guess we’ll see. Look, Nines. Connor shot Myers.”

Whatever Nines had thought was going to come out of Chloe’s mouth, it wasn’t that. “ _ Why?” _

“It’s not like he told us,” Chloe pointed out. “But he took the Anderson kid.”

“Connor shot Myers and took the Anderson kid,” Nines repeated, hoping that if he said the words out loud himself, they would start to make some sort of sense. “What the  _ fuck? _ ”

“You know what he’s doing,” Chloe said. “He’s going to the cops.”

“No,” Nines disagreed, automatically. “He wouldn’t.”

“He  _ is, _ ” Chloe said. “That’s what Amanda thinks. Or he finally had a fucking mental break. Richard. He shot  _ one of us. _ And he disappeared with the goddamn target. What the fuck else could he be doing?”

“Connor’s not a traitor,” Nines said, but it felt hollow when he said it.

“Two hours ago, I would have said the same thing,” she said. “Your mom is losing her shit. You’ve got to come back with me.”

“Jesus,” Nines said again. “Let me get dressed.”

He found his phone while he was putting clothes on, tangled in the sheets on the left side of the bed where he’d dropped it before dozing off. One of the calls was from Amanda. The others were from Chloe. He flipped through the texts. Nothing from Connor whatsoever.

He sent a text.

_ what’s going on? _

Then he waited thirty seconds. A whole thirty seconds, just staring at the screen. Connor was usually quick to reply when Nines texted, but there was no response this time. He looked away long enough to put socks on and then checked again. Nothing at all. Connor didn’t even have read receipts turned on, which made the whole affair deeply unsatisfying.

He shoved it into the pocket of his coat that wasn’t occupied by the gun and went back out into the living room. “Okay. I’m ready.”

Judging by how she was dressed, he’d half-expected Chloe to have taken her bike, but she had a sedan waiting outside. It made sense. You never wanted to ride a motorcycle when you expected someone might try and take a shot at you.

Not that Connor would do that to Chloe. Or.

Fuck, Nines didn’t even know anymore.

The whole car ride was silent. Nines sat perfectly still and stared at the lights of Detroit flashing past. Chloe just drove. Nines wasn’t a chatty person to begin with, and at the moment he had nothing to say to anyone but Connor.

He didn’t have that much to say to Connor either, besides the obvious.

_ Why? _

Not that there was much that Connor could say that Nines would have liked as an answer. He tried to construct some scenarios.

_ Connor, why did you shoot Myers and run off with the Lieutenant’s kid? _

_ Myers was a traitor and planned to kill me. I needed the kid as a hostage so I wouldn’t get shot by the police. _

That was vaguely plausible, at least, except Chloe had made it sound like the police weren’t even there. Besides, why would Derek Myers try to kill Connor? He’d never get away with it, and Nines had always thought of him as being just as loyal as—

—well, fuck.

When Chloe pulled into the garage with a tap of her passcard, Nines still didn’t have any solutions that he truly liked, and he suspected he wasn’t going to. Nines got out of the car when Chloe parked and started towards the door, but then realized Chloe wasn’t following.

“Aren’t you coming?” he asked.

“She wants to talk to you alone,” Chloe said. “Good luck.”

“Thanks.” 

Nines went straight in. There was no sense in delaying. 

When he opened the door, he saw his mother immediately. Amanda was in the foyer, pacing; she didn’t see him right away. Her hair, usually immaculately coiffed, had a few loose braids, like she’d been unable to stop herself from running her hands through it. It was uncharacteristic.

That, more than anything, drove home the fact that something was really, truly wrong.

“Mom?” Nines said.

Amanda turned around. “Richard.” She’d never liked his nickname. He’d always been Richard to her, just as he’d never been anything but Nines to Connor.

“What happened?” He suspected she would appreciate getting to the point over expressions of affection.

“What  _ hasn’t _ happened?” Amanda asked, rhetorically. “You know Philip Seymour was arrested this morning. Millions of dollars of revenue, like  _ that. _ ” Her fist clenched. “The police shouldn’t have been able to get anywhere near.”

“No,” said Nines.

“We had to send a message,” Amanda said. “You understood that, of course. Tell me, Richard, did you think that Connor was  _ incapable  _ of delivering such a message?”

“No,” Nines said, because he hadn’t. He had thought that Connor would find it distasteful, of course. Even Nines had stiffened a little when Amanda said,  _ I want Cole Anderson dead. That will make my point clear to the Lieutenant.  _ Maybe Connor had even been upset by the idea.

Actually, Nines had thought that was why Amanda had told Connor to get it done in the first place, when she knew it was more in Nines’ wheelhouse. She liked to test Connor, every once in a while, when she worried that he wasn’t ruthless enough to step into her position someday. Connor had never failed, of course, but he never liked it.

Nines had even asked. He’d said,  _ You good?  _ in passing, still tired from the flight, thinking about getting home and getting to bed. He wasn’t even sure he’d looked Connor in the eye.

Connor had answered in the affirmative, of course, but Nines couldn’t remember exactly what he’d said.

With that unsettling realization, he forced himself to focus on the conversation. “It was within his abilities.”

“I thought so too,” Amanda said. She sighed. It was a rare show of emotion. When she looked back up, her gaze had turned to ice again. “But apparently not. You, of course, will be able to succeed where he could not.”

“Of course,” Nines said.

“The priority is Connor,” Amanda ordered. “You know him best. Find him. And kill Cole Anderson.”

Nines nodded. “What about Connor?”

“What  _ about  _ Connor?” Amanda said. “Find out what in the world that boy thinks he is doing. Perhaps he’ll have a very good explanation, in which case you can bring him back here and he can convince me in person.”

“And if he doesn’t?” Nines asked.

“Kill him,” Amanda said. No expression crossed her face as she said it, as though she hadn’t handpicked Connor out of an orphanage at seven years old, given him her last name, groomed him to be her successor. As though he was just an inconvenience. Nines envied her resolve. “We don’t have room for traitors.”

“Understood,” Nines said.

“Good,” Amanda said. “You will not fail me.” She turned away in a clear dismissal, and Nines walked straight back out the door.

Chloe was still sitting in the car. “Where to?” she asked, as he slid into the passenger seat.

“Drop me off at Connor’s place,” said Nines. “I need to figure some stuff out.” Where Connor was. What in the hell his older brother thought he was doing, and why he’d done it now.

Chloe nodded and pulled out of the driveway. The inside of the car was as quiet as it had been on the way there, which gave Nines time to think.

First: what was he looking for?

Anything out of the ordinary. Anything missing. If something had gone wrong in the moment—if Connor had planned to carry out the mission as assigned and something had compelled him to cut and run—then there would be no signs that Connor expected to depart suddenly. If the apartment had been ripped apart, if Connor had packed, if there were signs that he’d been planning this, then that was a different story. But as long as it didn’t look premeditated, Nines could hope that it wasn’t what it looked like.

“What’d she want you to do?” Chloe asked, as she took the freeway on-ramp.

“Find Connor. Kill the Anderson kid.” He hesitated.

Chloe stole a quick glance at him under the guise of changing lanes. Nines was certain his face didn’t give anything away. “And?”

“And nothing,” Nines said. “If he’s not a traitor, he comes back. If he is, he dies.”

“You good with that?”

“If Connor betrayed us,” Nines said, really meaning ‘ _ If Connor betrayed me’,  _ “I’ll want to shoot him myself.”

Chloe nodded. “Not too much traffic tonight.”

“Lucky us,” said Nines.

It was a fifteen-minute drive to Connor’s place. It was a nice place, neat, quiet. A good part of town, but Amanda’s complex was in a good part of town, too, and Nines had found a good neighborhood adjacent. Connor hadn’t needed to hop the freeway to find a place that would suit his taste. Nines had complained about it when he picked it, that he was making himself a pain in the ass to visit.

“But you love me enough to make it work, don’t you?” Connor said innocently. “I really like the light in here.”

Connor wasn’t much of an interior decorator, so Nines knew that was bullshit, but he hadn’t poked too hard at his motives at the time. Now, though, the distance seemed especially deliberate.

_ What parts of yourself were you hiding from us? _

He was still turning that question over in his head when Chloe pulled up at the front of the complex. “Need me to wait?” she asked.

“No,” Nines said. “I’m going after him from here.”

She nodded. “Good luck.”

“You too.” He wasn’t sure what Chloe’s assignment was after dropping him off, but Amanda trusted her, which meant that she’d be caught up in the damage control as well. She gave him a half-wave, and he turned and headed up the stairs.

Nines was a master at breaking into apartments to snoop around, but he didn’t need to break into this one. He’d had the spare key on his keyring since the day Connor moved in. He didn’t often need it; he came to the apartment for Connor, not to stare at Connor’s furniture or rifle through the shelves of detective novels, and Connor almost never left Detroit. Consequently, Nines had only been in the apartment by himself a handful of times, mostly to feed Connor’s fish.

He tried to remind himself to see the space through new eyes when he opened the door, but it was no use. His guard dropped at the sight of the afghan folded neatly over the back of the sofa, at the glow of the tropical fish tank that dominated the back wall. From behind the rocks, a dwarf gourami peered out.

_ Connor wouldn’t leave his fish _ , a deeply irrational voice in Nines’ head said.  _ Connor loves his fish. _ Before Nines could tell it/himself to shut up, a nastier one took its place.  _ You thought Connor loved you too, didn’t you? _

Nines kicked the door shut behind him, flicked the living room light on, and closed his eyes. The apartment was silent except for the hum of the fish tank filter. Connor was not there, and he had to get out of his own head in order to do this.

_ You know him best, _ their mother had said.  _ Find him. _

But standing surrounded by Connor’s things, Connor himself vanished into thin air leaving a body and a bullet and no answers behind him, Nines worried that he didn’t really know Connor at all.

He breathed out and opened his eyes. The gourami had come out from the rocks and was watching him from the middle of the tank now. Nines turned away from it. By habit, he removed his shoes and set them on the rack by the door. Only Connor’s boots were missing. It was an appropriate shoe choice for the summer rain outside.

Nothing out of the ordinary.

From the front closet, one jacket was missing. Connor’s favorite, but that didn’t mean anything, either. His brother was a creature of habit; he wore the same thing as often as he could get away with it, lined his books up in the same order, ordered the same things at restaurants. Both Amanda and Nines had tried to break him of as many habits as they could—predictability was dangerous, their mother had always said.  _ It’s like you’re asking for someone to get to you, _ she’d snarled at Connor once.  _ Are you doing this just to make me worry? _

He hadn’t been, Nines didn’t think. Connor simply didn’t like change.

Nines was good at unpredictability. He had no schedule day in and day out. For the first time, he thought he knew how Connor felt when something unexpected happened and his older brother went very still except for the coin that he rolled across his knuckles over and over _. _

_ Go back. Go back to the way things were. _

They wouldn’t, not if Nines just stood there, so he took one last look at the empty hanger and walked down the hallway to Connor’s office.

The first thing he noticed was that Connor’s laptop was missing. His heart jumped and he forced his breathing to settle. That wasn’t out of the ordinary. Connor tended to bring it with him everywhere.

Next, the filing cabinet. Every drawer had an individual lock, and Connor carried the keys with him, so Nines had to break in with his swiss army knife. He stopped after two drawers; they both appeared to be full, and even if Connor had removed a file or two Nines would never know the difference.

After that, he checked the drawers of the desk. Then the false bottoms of the drawers of the desk. He opened the safe under Connor’s desk, too, the one he’d memorized the combination for years ago watching over Connor’s shoulder, and then he removed, piece by piece, every single object in the desk, and every piece of the desk that he could take off with the tools on his knife.

When he finally stopped, breathing hard, he had his answer.

Connor had taken two things with him. One of them was his ledger. Connor was an obsessive record-keeper, a financial genius, the Stern family’s best accountant since he was nineteen. It wasn’t so terribly strange that Connor would bring the record book with him. He did record transactions in it, all in a careful code that only Connor knew by heart and anyone else could only decipher with laborious reference to the key.

The key was in a black notebook that Connor kept in the safe that only he and Nines could unlock. The ledger might have traveled with Connor, but the only way to decode it did not. If the key came out of the safe, the ledger went in.

Connor’s ledger was gone, and the safe beneath the desk was empty.

“You fucking traitor,” Nines breathed into the emptiness of the office. Connor’s absence seemed to stare back at him, with far more force than Connor’s presence ever managed. Connor liked to fade into the background, but his ghost had gravitas. “You filthy fucking traitor!”

It was convenient that he’d already taken the desk partly apart, because it meant he had plenty of pieces of wood at hand to smash against the floor in fury.

When his rage finally bled out, his face was flushed and he was breathing hard. There were splintered pieces of the desk strewn across the floor. He’d taken his shoes off at the door in stupid pointless deference to Connor’s desire for cleanliness, so he had to pick his way carefully around them as he exited.

The bedroom was last. Strictly speaking, Nines didn’t need to go there to know what had happened. Connor had meant to go, and he’d taken the tools of destruction with him. But he still went to look.

There were photographs on the nightstand, two of them. One of Amanda and Nines and Connor together, from some years back. Formal. A family portrait. The other was a candid photograph of Nines and Connor from when they were children, on the beach at Lake Erie. Connor was still taller than Nines. They were both laughing.

Connor hadn’t removed either of the photographs from their frames. Of course he hadn’t. It was impractical. Too sentimental even for an idiot like Connor. Nines shouldn’t have expected him to take them.

He was a traitor. It made no sense that he’d bring mementos of the family he was turning his back on.

Still, Nines had to know one more thing. He opened up the nightstand and looked inside. Connor’s gun was gone, of course. There was an old pair of reading glasses, still in their case. A flashlight. A wooden box. Nines flipped it open and looked inside. There were still some things in it. A pearl ring that had been their biological mother’s. Some foreign coins. But not—

Nines emptied it out on the bed just to be sure, before carefully repacking it and putting it back in the nightstand.

Connor had left the photographs behind. He’d left their mother’s ring. But the crumpled mushroom of a used bullet that Nines knew for a fact had rested in the box for the past six years was undeniably gone.

_ So maybe he does love you,  _ the voice in his head whispered, and to his surprise the thought didn’t make him feel any better at all.


	2. July 17, 2036 | Lt. Hank Anderson

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If this isn't the Literal Worst Day of Hank Anderson's life, it at least cracks the top three.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So many thanks to everyone who has left a comment or expressed interest in this story so far! It's been a really wonderful response. Special thanks to [KaydenReece](https://archiveofourown.org/users/https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaydenReece) who beta-read this chapter!

_ July 17, 2036 | Lt. Hank Anderson _

Jeffrey came up to Hank’s desk right when the call came in. He was scanning through an interrogation transcript, thinking about how many more people they could indict based on testimony if they managed to round them up. Thinking about how  _ well  _ the day had gone.

At this point in his life, Hank knew better than to talk about how well things were going. It was just fucking tempting fate to say that it seemed like a case was about to break, or to talk about how a relationship was working out. But thinking about it seemed pretty safe.

Apparently fucking not, he decided when he saw the expression on Jeffrey’s face.

They’d been friends for a long time. Almost twenty years of working together, and Hank had a pretty good grasp on what the captain’s expressions meant. So it wasn’t that his expectations were good; one looked and he was already steeling himself for the possibilities.  _ Something was wrong with the warrant and the evidence is going to get thrown out.  _ That was about the level of bad he was anticipating. Or, more generously,  _ the hard drives were all wiped, we can’t get any digital data. _

“Hank,” Jeffrey said, quietly.

“What is it?” Hank said.

“My office,” Jeffrey said. “Now.”

Hank stood up and followed, not because he was exactly eager for answers but because it was better to get bad news over with. Pulling off a band-aid. He watched Fowler shut the door to his office and then just stand there.

“What?” Hank asked.

“I don’t have a good way to say this,” he said. “About twenty minutes ago, two armed men showed up at Chrysler Elementary School’s after-school care program looking for your son.”

Hank physically froze for a moment. When he looked back, he would realize that he had no way to describe the feeling of pure dread. Of course, there were ways to skirt around it, expressions that were meant to capture the sensation: The bottom dropped out of his stomach. His heart stopped. Neither of those came close to what it was like. It was like the entire world ended, just for a second, and only Hank noticed.

“Is Cole dead?” he asked, point-blank.

“We don’t know,” Jeffrey said. “One of them took him. He’s gone.”

“The Stern Family,” Hank said. “Was it?”

“We don’t know anything yet,” Jeffrey said grimly. “But I would guess so.”

“I’m going to the scene,” Hank said. “Right now.”

“I’m not stopping you,” Jeffrey sighed. “Hank. Be careful.”

“Right,” Hank said, not meaning it in the slightest. It took him twenty seconds to pick up his gun, badge and jacket and make it to the door of the precinct, and it felt like twenty seconds too long.

As he pulled out of the parking lot and pressed down on the gas as hard as he could reasonably justify, the triumph of the morning felt like it had happened a hundred years ago.

The thing was that Hank had known right from the beginning that it was going to be a long day. He’d gotten into work early to begin with. If anyone had asked, he would have said that it was to get ready for the raid, but in reality, there was nothing to be done much earlier than nine AM when the SWAT team arrived. The actual answer was that he was sleeping more lightly than usual, filled with something on the knife-edge between anxiety and anticipation.

Julie had Cole for the weekend, and it was a rare occasion that Hank was glad for it; if he was kept at work late, he wouldn’t have to scramble for other arrangements, and Cole would have the full attention of at least  _ one _ parent. When he picked Cole up on Sunday night, everything would have settled back down, and if he was lucky he’d have a happy-if-carefully-sanitized version of the story to pass on.

Their morning routine was just that. Nothing but a routine. Hank got up and took a shower before waking Cole. They talked. Cole was a chatty child. Very verbal, even when he was a kid. A little kid. Or littler than he was now; maybe six still counted as little. Hank wasn’t sure if most kindergarteners were good conversationalists, but his kid sure was. That was a fact.

For the life of him, Hank couldn’t remember later what they’d talked about. He’d made Cole scrambled eggs and strawberries. (He hadn’t remembered that either. He’d had to go look in the garbage to double-check he wasn’t mixing up the memory with some other day in his head.)

He could retrieve a lot of conversations, of course. He did listen. He remembered everything Cole said. But he couldn’t remember the order. Was it that morning, or last week, that he’d wanted to know if Sumo understood English? Was it this Friday or some other, when Cole told him about the book they were reading in class?

What was the last thing he said to Cole before the kid got out of the car?

_ Who the fuck didn’t know the last thing they said to their kid? _

That was the question that stuck in his head, ringing underneath the facts and Jeffrey’s quiet words. He started to piece together the story in his head to keep from screaming: after kindergarten ended at three o’clock, the teacher had walked him and the other students who stayed late over to the after school program. Cole would have been there for about two hours before the men arrived, and then—

And then one of them took Cole. His son was gone.

The GPS on Hank’s phone routinely reminded him that it took an average of twenty-two minutes to drive from the precinct to Cole’s elementary school. Hank made it there in seventeen. The parking lot of the daycare was full of parents and cars, waiting, clutching their children. Hank couldn’t look at any of them. He walked straight forward towards the yellow tape and flashed his badge at the officer, who waved him through.

The room had been emptied out; the body of a man lay on the floor, dead and still. A crime scene photographer was snapping images of the body, of the boot prints, the overturned chair, and Officer Tina Chen was standing just off the side and taking notes.

“Do we know who he is?” Hank asked the second she turned to look at him. Straight to business. He couldn’t bear any sympathy she might have had right then. He couldn’t think too hard about it when he had a job to do.

“Derek Myers,” Tina told him. “One of Amanda Stern’s enforcers.”

Hank knelt to take a better look. He was a big man, heavyset. His beard was going gray. Vaguely familiar, although Hank wasn’t sure if that was because he’d seen a picture of the guy before or because he looked exactly like you expected an enforcer to look. He had a bullet straight through his head.

“Just one shot?” Hank asked.

“Right through the back of the head,” Tina told him.

“The back?” Hank shook his head. “What happened?”

“They knew he’d be here,” Tina said, quietly. “They came right in and asked. The teacher didn’t tell them at first, but then they said they’d shoot every kid in the room if she didn’t say which one was Cole.”

“So she told them.” Tina’s silence was enough of an answer. Hank tried to fight back the rage. It wasn’t the teacher’s fault. She was responsible for a lot of kids, and who was Hank to tell her that she should have sold them all out for his son?

It was the Stern outfit. They really would have shot them all. It had been the right thing to do. But it didn’t make it hurt any less that she had stepped back and let them take his son.

“So who shot him?” The addition for the first part was easy. Hank had taken down a red ice ring that he’d suspected was connected to the Stern Family. Now he was a hundred percent sure that was the case, considering they’d obviously come for some sort of revenge. But as grateful as he was that he wasn’t looking down at his son’s body, he couldn’t figure out what the hell had gone down.

“That’s the crazy part,” Tina said. “The guy he came in with. Myers did the talking the whole time, the whole ‘ _ where is Cole Anderson, the tell-me-and-I’ll-shoot.’ _ And I guess his friend just stood there, until the guy took a step towards Cole, and then bang.”

Hank blinked. “That can’t be it.”

“Yeah, what the fuck?” Tina agreed.

“We’re getting a real statement from her, yeah?” Hank asked. “I want—what’s the teacher’s name?”

“Ashley Concord.”

“I want her back at the station. I want to know what they said and did word for word. Did she say what the guy looked like? The other guy.”

“Brown hair,” Tina responded, looking down at her notebook. “Tall and skinny. We’ve already called up a sketch artist, she’ll give a description.”

“Good,” Hank said. “Anything else?”

“Not yet,” Tina said. She turned to look at him, grief written across her face. “Fuck, Lieutenant, I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. Thanks,” Hank said. “We’ll get him back.” The words felt heavy and hollow in his mouth, all at the same time, but he had to say it because he couldn’t afford for one second to believe the alternative.

He went back outside. He was scanning the parking lot for the teacher, but someone else found him first. “Hank!”

He turned. “Julie.” His ex-wife was still in her scrubs—she’d obviously come straight from work. She was practically standing in a puddle from the earlier rain, completely oblivious to it even though an umbrella dangled from her free hand. Her hair was coming out of its bun.

“Hank! What’s going on?” she demanded. “They said someone took Cole!”

“Yeah,” Hank said. “Yeah, someone did.”

“Kidnapped him,” she continued. “Someone took our son.”

“Yeah,” Hank said, because there was nothing else he could say. It came out soft, like a sigh.

She looked at him. He worried for a second that this was going to turn into a fight. They’d had a lot of those before they separated. At first there’d been a lot of yelling, but that had upset Cole, so Hank had made an effort to hold all arguments at no more than a conversational volume. It had made them quieter but not any more pleasant.

The decision to end it had been mutual eventually, but that didn’t mean things were all good between them, and despite their respective careers they both had a tendency to blow up in high-stress situations.

Hank couldn’t deal with a fight right now, though. Thankfully, Julie seemed to have the exact same thought, because she just crumpled.

“Why is this happening?” she sobbed. “Is it because of you?”

That stung. “Yeah,” Hank admitted. “Yeah, I think so. But believe me, Julie, if I’d thought for a second anyone’d hurt him—“

“I know,” she cut him off. “I know, I just.” She sniffled and wiped at her face. Then she stepped forward and hugged him.

He sighed a little and hugged her back. It was, if nothing else, familiar. They’d loved each other for a long time. “I’m gonna find him, Julie.”

“Good,” she said fiercely. Her grip tightened for a second and then she let go.

“As soon as I know anything I’ll tell you,” he promised. “And we’ll get someone to come by and keep an eye on you.”

Her eyes widened. “You think somebody might come after me?”

He went for flat-out honesty. “I have no fucking clue,” Hank told her. “We have a guess of who took him, but whatever went down in there was—weird.” He shook his head. “When I know, you’ll know.”

“Okay,” Julie said. “Be safe, Hank.”

“Yeah,” he said, not quite agreement but close enough that she wouldn’t question it.

He watched her go. Then he turned back to look for the teacher. Ashley Concord was standing by a police officer, clutching her canvas bag. She was young, mid-twenties if Hank had to take a wild guess, and she looked badly shaken. As angry as he had been at the thought of her earlier, Hank had to sympathize. Nothing prepared you for having a gun pointed at you, let alone having the fifteen-odd children left in your care threatened. She hadn’t signed up for this.

He made his way over to her. “Ms. Concord?” he asked.

She turned. “Yes?” Then she recognized him and all the blood drained from her face. “Mr. Anderson, I—”

He headed her off at the pass. “Lieutenant Anderson. We’d like you to come back to the station.”

“Of course,” she agreed immediately. “I made a statement…”

“We’d like to record it and ask some more questions,” Hank said. Her expression shifted and he reassured her, “You’re not in trouble. But your recollections could be critical in figuring out what these people wanted. We’d also like you to sit with a sketch artist and see if you could give us a description of the man who took Cole.”

“Yes,” she said. “I can—I can do that.”

“Great,” Hank said. “Let’s get you a ride.”

“My car is here,” she said.

“Better not to drive when you’re in shock.” What a hypocritical statement, Hank thought as soon as he said it.  _ Shock  _ was a mild way to describe how he was feeling. But he flagged down an officer to give Ashley a ride back anyway.

When he got back to his car, he just sat in the driver’s seat for a second, trying to get his head on straight. He needed to be thinking clearly. He needed to be ready for anything they might find.

The reality was that Hank didn’t have the slightest fucking idea what was going on. He was sure that this was the work of the Stern Family. He was sure this was revenge for the red ice bust from that morning that felt like a million years ago. And he was sure they’d taken his son.

But he couldn’t figure out why they’d taken him in the first place. Hank didn’t have anything to offer them in exchange. He was a terrible candidate for getting a ransom out of. And it was way too public to be a means of blackmail—manipulating Hank by threatening Cole could only go so far when it was the literal first thing all his colleagues would expect.

So why take Cole? Kidnapping didn’t feel like the right move at all. It felt wrong to even think it, but if Hank had expected anything, it would have been murder. Killing his kid as revenge, as a message. Snatching him and vanishing? Not the typical wheelhouse.

And even more puzzling: why shoot one of their own guys? He could only assume that Derek Myers had done something wrong, fucked up in some way that made it necessary for whoever Amanda Stern’s other guy was to shoot him in the back of the skull. But from Tina’s summary, it had all seemed to be going smoothly for the men right up until the gunshot.

He had to figure out what had gone wrong. And he had to find out who had taken Cole. It was his only chance to find his son alive.

With that, he turned the key and brought the engine to life. Back to the precinct to talk to Ashley Concord and go over every scrap of evidence they had. It may have been a long day, but it wasn’t anywhere near over. It wouldn’t be over until he had Cole back.

He made the drive back in nineteen minutes. When he walked in, he could feel everyone’s eyes on him, but he carefully avoided looking up and headed straight for his desk. Fowler met him there.

“I should pull you off this case, Anderson,” Jeffrey started.

“Like hell,” Hank said. “Jeffrey, you can’t. I’ll do this by the book, I swear to god, but you have to let me look for him.”

The captain regarded him carefully. Hank met his gaze right back, hoping that it conveyed how serious he was. If Fowler pulled him off the case—fuck, he’d take vacation time and work it himself.

Luckily, it didn’t come to that; Jeffrey nodded slowly. “If it’s too much, if something happens, I’m pulling you,” he warned.

“Thank you,” Hank said, meaning it.

“I’m sorry, Hank,” Jeffrey said.

“Don’t be sorry,” Hank said. “Just help me get him back.” Hank couldn’t think about what  _ sorry  _ might mean. Couldn’t think about the likelihood that the Sterns would realize what Hank had thought about in the car—how much quicker and safer it would be to just shoot Cole—and kill him before he had a chance at getting him back.

He caught the eye of Officer Miller. “Hey, did they get the witness back here? The teacher. Ashley Concord.”

“Yeah, they sat her down with a sketch artist,” Miller said. “Hey, Hank, listen—“

“Save it,” Hank interrupted. “Please.”

Miller nodded. “Okay.  We’ve got your back. Whatever you need.”

“Thanks.” That word was starting to feel unreal, the number of times he’d said it in the last hour.

He needed to focus. He went and got a cup of coffee and came back to the desk and pulled everything they had on Derek Myers. It was quite a bit, it turned out—the guy had worked for Amanda Stern for years. He’d done time in prison. There was a list of known associates, other hired guns who worked for the Sterns or were suspected to, and Hank started picking through the photographs, trying to find someone who matched the description of  _ brown hair  _ and  _ tall  _ and  _ skinny _ . Not that many, but too many. It could have meant anything.

The Sterns had been around for nearly fifty years. They had thousands of pages of documents, of people, of crimes. Every few years they managed a breakthrough. An arrest. A bust. But the Sterns kept kicking.

At least, Hank thought grimly, he had managed to hit them where it hurt. They wouldn’t have risked something like this if that ring hadn’t been important. But it felt far less important now, in the face of Cole’s life.

He kept reading for what felt like hours, hoping he’d see a connection, spark some sort of idea of where even to look. The text was starting to blur on his computer screen when Tina came over and tapped on the desk to get his attention.

“Yeah?”

“Sketch is done,” she said, holding a sheet of paper towards him. “And you’ll never fucking guess who it is.”

“Let me see,” Hank said. He took the sheet from her and looked, and then stared, disbelieving.

“You’re sure?”

“She was sure,” Tina confirmed.

“I don’t believe it,” Hank said, still staring at the familiar face. “ _ Connor Stern?” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please comment or leave kudos if you can! It truly means a lot.
> 
> I'm [catalists](http://catalists.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr and [Chrome](http://pillowfort.io/Chrome/) on Pillowfort, come find me!


	3. July 17, 2036 | Connor Stern

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Connor Stern makes a decision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who has commented or left kudos or talked to me about this fic so far, and sorry for the delay! This chapter is longer than usual to make up for it! 
> 
> Thanks, especially, to one of my favorite people [Kate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmoscorpse) who beta-read this chapter!

_ July 17, 2036  _ |  _ Connor Stern _

Connor had been having the same fantasy since he was fourteen years old. In the broadest strokes, it went something like this: he would pack up everything important into a backpack. He would find his brother and take him by the hand like he had when they were little and say, “We’re leaving,” and Nines would follow. And then together they would walk out into the streets of Detroit and never see Amanda Stern ever again.

The older he got, the more specific it became. Who he would call. Which bag he would use and what he would take. He could mentally trace his footsteps through Amanda’s house to each necessary object, like playing a video game over and over until he could speedrun it blindfolded. He knew every detail: how much money he could withdraw from an ATM, which places still took cash. When he was sixteen he memorized the schedules of the buses that went up toward the Canadian border. Of course Amanda’s influence didn’t stop outside the city, but it might have been better. Safer.

He thought about it when he couldn’t sleep at night. He thought about it when Amanda was disappointed: when her voice got low and cold, when her grip on his wrist was far too tight.

He thought, and he dreamed, and he never dared. 

Not until it was too late.

On Nines’ seventeenth birthday, Amanda had ordered Connor’s little brother to go kill a man. Nines had nodded, and then gone out and done it without hesitation. When he got back, Amanda had smiled at him and told him he had done well before she presented him with the cake she’d had made. Connor had smiled too, stiff and fake, and then he had hid in the bathroom to throw up.

When Nines was three, Connor had explained to him what ambulances were and Nines had cried whenever they saw one, because he was sad someone had gotten hurt. The image Connor clung to of his baby brother would never have been capable of these things, but of course Nines was now. Nines had to be. Connor had been too afraid for too long, and his little brother was gone.

He still asked, that night. Nines still lived with Amanda, while Connor had his own apartment, and Nines had walked him out of Amanda’s house. Halfway down the front walk Connor had gripped Nines’ forearm and said, “If we could leave, would you want to?”

“Leave?” Nines had asked. “Why?”

“Just—if you could do something else. Would you want to?”

“Leave Mom. Leave the family.”

“Would you want to?” Connor had repeated.

“No,” Nines had said. “Would you?”

“No,” Connor had lied, and that was when he had known beyond a doubt it was too late.

He had gone back to Amanda’s house a few days later, and while he was waiting for her to finish up a phone call, he had stood in the garden in the back. It was a Zen garden, and Connor had been utterly enchanted with it when Amanda had first taken him to it as a child. She’d been stern at first, warning him to keep to the path, that it was all very carefully arranged. But Connor had been quiet and precise even at seven, and she’d gradually warmed up as she saw that he was absorbing it all without disturbing anything just as he was meant to.

“Do you like it?” she’d asked him after they’d walked the path once, nice and slow. They’d passed the sand garden and the Japanese maple and the carefully-set interlocking stones.

Connor had nodded, overcome by shyness.

“Use your words,” she’d warned, sharp.

“Yes,” Connor had said, “Very much.”

“Then as long as you don’t disturb anything, and you tell me or whoever is looking after you where you’re going, you can come out here whenever you like,” she’d told him.

He’d thanked her and meant it wholeheartedly. He hadn’t understood anything at the time, who Amanda was or what she might be preparing them for. She had been a savior to him then, and the garden a paradise.

He’d stopped thinking of Amanda as their rescuer a long time before that evening, but the garden still felt safe, and so it was in the garden that he resolved himself. He looked out at the lines of sand drawn to represent water, and he imagined all of his plans of escape, his hopes of something else, the futile fantasy gathered up in a bundle and placed into the imaginary current. Then he breathed in and out and let it vanish into the distance.

He was eighteen years old. Nines was seventeen. They had been made into what they would always be, and there in the garden Connor let go of the dream of being anything else.

\---

It was not until six years later that he found himself somehow back knee-deep in that river, yanking the tattered remnants of his idealism out of the mud at the bottom and dragging the sodden remains of it (and himself) home. It started as an ordinary afternoon. Outside it drizzled, a light July rain that made the air feel heavier than it should have. The droplets collected on the window in his office and cast speckled shadows across Connor’s papers as he carefully tracked the payments.

After years, it felt like a rhythm, the account numbers, the names, every twisted dollar traded for drugs or human bodies accounted for and transformed until it came out clean. The code of the ledger might as well have been Connor’s mother tongue for the number of years he’d been writing in it, thinking in it. Sometimes the combinations haunted his dreams.

On his desk, his cell phone rang. The caller ID said  _ Amanda Stern _ and so Connor answered on the first ring. 

“This is Connor.” Soft, formal. She didn’t want ‘Hi Mom’ and he didn’t want to give it to her.

“Connor, come home. We have a situation.”

_ I am home,  _ the tiny bitter voice in his head protested, but Connor knew better than to say it. “I’m on my way.”

“Good.” A click. No goodbye, no ‘I love you,’ because Amanda knew that Connor didn’t need those tricks and reassurances anymore. He knew Amanda sometimes played the game with Nines still. The intimation that he was her son, that their bond as family tied them more closely together. But he was Amanda’s successor, and he’d accepted it.

At the house, Amanda was on the phone when he arrived. He could hear her voice through the wall of the next room, raised higher than its normal volume but not quite so loud that he could make out what she was saying. He left his shoes at the door and went into the living room, standing in his socks on the pristine white carpet. On the coffee table was the chess board, set up for a new game. Beside it was the game clock, seeming austere in its wood-and-metal framing.

Objectively, the chess board itself was a beautiful object. The whole thing was made out of glass, the white pieces cut from a clear crystal, the black pieces from glass like obsidian, the board beneath it a seamless checkerboard of the same. It had sat on the table the day Connor and Nines moved in, and it hadn’t moved. Amanda had made him sit across it from her for the first time the August he turned eight, her on the couch and him on a little round meditation pillow on the floor.

She’d explained what each piece did just once, and made him play. At first she had been patient with his losses. Unaccustomed to attention, Connor had enjoyed being her focus. The chess board itself was irrelevant—the game was fine, if nothing lifechanging—but as an excuse to spend hours a week with the first adult who had expressed any concern for him for as long as he could remember, he loved it.

After a few months, though, it grew tiresome. He suggested other activities and she grew cold. He experimented with playing poorly, hoping she’d grow bored, and Amanda became angry.  _ All this time and energy I’m putting into you,  _ she had spat, fingers closing around his small wrist.  _ The least you could do is try. _

So Connor tried. He became better and better at chess, and Amanda played better correspondingly. In that sense, she was a good teacher, constantly adjusting her level so she always remained just the slightest bit ahead. Games began to stretch out longer and longer between them, half an hour and then forty-five minutes and then stretching towards an hour. It had once taken her no more than ten minutes to defeat him.

Then, the clock. He was eleven or twelve when she said  _ in the real world you can’t take this long  _ as he hesitated over a move, trying to play out various scenarios on the board. And after that they only played timed games, another reminder that Amanda’s time was valuable and he wasn’t to waste it.

First he played worse. Eventually he played better. He was thirteen the first time he won, and he saw something like approval in her eyes. For a few years in middle school he played competitively, winning a few competitions, but Amanda wanted his focus on other things and he didn’t love the game, not really.

For a while, he thought he might have loved the sense of accomplishment, the approval in her eyes when he played well. But these days he could afford to be more honest with himself, and he knew that what he really loved was the sense of power, the idea that in this one narrow thing he was better than his adoptive mother.

He and Amanda rarely played chess anymore, but Connor had won their last five games.

“Connor,” Amanda said, startling him out of his reverie, “Sit down. We have to talk.” She sat on the couch, to the left side, and looked at him. Her mouth was a thin line, telegraphing her irritation after the phone call, but otherwise she was entirely composed.

“What happened?” Connor asked. He sat on the other side of the couch, body angled to look at her.

“Lieutenant Anderson,” she said the name like it was a curse, “Arrested Philip Seymour this morning, and a number of others associated with his operation.”

That was one of their two major red ice operations, Connor’s near-encyclopedic knowledge of their business endeavors supplied. He quickly did the calculations — up to fifty people compromised, all told, although a number of them might be able to escape actual arrest. Several million dollars. Their producers were overseas, so likely unaffected, but they’d lose what was in transit. The bank accounts would be easily handled; it was the loss of personnel that upset Amanda, and also the loss of several reliable transit networks. Worse, the transit spilled over into other businesses.  _ Highly _ disruptive.

“I’ll take care of the accounts immediately,” Connor replied. His laptop was in his bag, and his hand twitched towards it. Amanda noticed the motion and the brief ingrained fear of angering her, amplified by the room and the chessboard and the sharpness of her gaze, made Connor’s breath catch — but she merely nodded and he pulled it out and opened it up, beginning to tie up what loose ends he could.

“That’s not the only thing I need from you,” she said.

“Of course,” Connor said, although he wasn’t sure what she would ask. He was glad to have anticipated one of her requests, though. It gave him a settled feeling. An understanding of purpose.

The door clicked again, and Connor turned to look over his shoulder. It was Nines, dragging his roller bag behind him. “I came from the airport,” he said, “What is it?”

“Philip Seymour was arrested,” she said. “We’re dealing with it now.”

“You need me for anything?” Nines said, swiping at his eyes as though the motion would wipe away the jetlag.

“No,” Amanda said. “I’m having Connor take care of it.”

That set off alarms in Connor’s head. What Nines usually took care of and what Connor was responsible for had little in common. There was something in her tone that Connor didn’t like, although he quickly reassured himself that she could easily have meant that Nines’ set of skills was unnecessary.

And then Amanda continued, as though she had seen where his thoughts were headed and couldn’t allow him even the temporary relief. “Connor, we need to send a message to Lieutenant Anderson that this sort of occurrence is not acceptable. Our business is best run with limited interference.”

“Of course,” Connor said after a moment. He waited. She looked at him, and he cleared his throat in the unexpected silence.

“Cole Anderson must be taken care of. Please arrange and oversee the operation. By this evening is best. We must not look vulnerable.”

They did not attack police, for the most part, and when Amanda initially spoke his mind filled in the idea of killing Hank Anderson. He didn’t like the idea. Against reason, he liked the man. Of course the lieutenant was an enemy of the Stern Family, which meant that Connor’s feelings mattered very little. He didn’t like the idea of planning Hank’s assassination, or any assassination, but if it was necessary Connor could handle it.

It was possible, even likely, that Amanda knew he had some degree of respect for the man and wanted him to be responsible for that reason. A little reminder of what really mattered.

Then, just as Connor had begun to resign himself to the task, his planning caught up with his actual instructions. He choked on his own spit and dissolved into a fit of coughs. “Cole Anderson?” he asked, trying to keep his voice level the second he could breathe again.

“Yes,” Amanda said.

“He’s six,” Connor said, blankly.

“His father should have thought of that,” Amanda said, voice cold. “I want Cole Anderson dead. That will make my point clear to the Lieutenant.”

For a moment, Connor was entirely frozen. Then he nodded, although his head felt strange and heavy, like all movement was being made through a thick fog. “I see. I will make the arrangements.”

“Good,” Amanda said, and rewarded him with a small smile. “I’m sure you’re capable of this.”  _ I’m making sure you’re capable of this,  _ she seemed to be saying.

Connor nodded again and slid his laptop back into its bag before he stood. His stomach roiled. He felt the urge to vomit, but instead he picked his way carefully back across the white carpeting and put his shoes back on.

“You good?” Nines’ hand brushed his shoulder. Connor suppressed a shudder at the contact, at  _ any _ contact. He felt like there was poison in his veins, injected there by the act he’d been charged with, and anything he touched could be corrupted.

“Fine,” Connor said. “Go get some rest. You look tired.”

Nines went out ahead of him in the end, because Connor spent an inordinately long time doing up the laces on his boots. To his surprise, when he looked back Amanda still was in the living room, watching him.

“I’m going to step out back to make a call,” Connor said, and the steadiness of his own voice came as a surprise. “If that’s alright.”

She waved him off. “Don’t disappoint me, Connor.”

Connor nodded. His eyes lingered on the chess set once more, and then he went outside and into the backyard. He stood on the porch to make the phone call. It was one he didn’t make often, given the parts of the business he tried to avoid, but it was a simple matter to ask Derek Myers to make himself available for the evening. The rest of the plan would have to be arranged at home. Connor already maintained a file on Anderson, though. It wouldn’t be difficult.

He put his phone away and stepped off the porch and walked into the Zen garden. With every step he took his feet felt heavier. For a split second he tried to calm himself, and then he let the sick feeling in his gut overwhelm him and dropped to his knees, gagging.

A child.  _ A child.  _ He didn’t know what he had done to deserve this. Perhaps Amanda didn’t trust him as much as he believed, or maybe he’d just annoyed her a little and she thought this a just response, or maybe he’d been wrong and she was still playing games with him, just a different kind than she used to. No more carrot; just the stick, over and over again to see if she could break Connor of everything she hated about him.

Connor hadn’t realized there was anything left in him to break, but he felt it snap inside him.  _ Cole Anderson is six years old. His parents are divorced, but they both love him dearly. His mother’s name is Julia Davis. His father’s name is Hank Anderson. Anderson was kind to you and you have never been able to forget it. _

No. A correction:  _ You have chosen not to forget it. _

It would have been better if he had, but kindness still felt like a precious thing. Maybe it always would. Letting go of any memory of it went against all instinct.

He’d thought he’d given all this up years ago. The grief, the yearning, the sick seeping hatred in his heart for what he was. The thing he had allowed Amanda to shape him into, that he had let her make Nines into. But it was too late. 

Too late.

His Nines was gone. Sweet, empathetic, six-year-old Nines was gone.

Six-year-old Cole was…

Connor picked himself up carefully off the path and stared out at the sand garden. His eyes traced the lines, and in his ears he heard the roaring of water, and beneath it the thud of his own heartbeat. He imagined the water surging all around him, the crash of it and then the quiet as he sunk under and tried to find what was left of himself.

What was he capable of?

In the garden, in the water, he found the answer he’d discarded years ago, half-drowned, half-buried. The pieces of a plan that his child self had written over and over in his head. Already he could see ways to improve it, better moves, but the outcome was far bleaker than it had been in his imagination because Nines would not be at his side. Nines’ hand would not be in his.

Nines would be at his back, his dogged shadow. Nines knew Connor better than anyone in the world and he was a better hunter than anyone else Connor could imagine.

There would be no outcome where Connor came out of this alive.

He turned that idea over in his head. If Connor made this choice, he would have days to live. He would be turning on the only people who loved him, in whatever twisted way they were capable. 

But he would save Cole Anderson’s life. He would spare Hank Anderson and Julia Davis the horrible pain of that loss. And he would rip apart as much of the organization as he could, and maybe no other children would die.

Maybe no other children would be warped into monsters the way Connor had been warped.

All it would cost was his life, and what was that worth? Could he live with himself if he let Cole Anderson die? He found a memory of a police station, ten years ago. No. He couldn’t kill a child. Even if he went back to Amanda, prostrated himself, begged that he wasn’t capable, that would only leave someone else to do the deed, and a tightening of Connor’s own leash. He would never have this opportunity again.

In the garden, standing on the river bottom holding the pieces of everything he’d once believed, he made his decision, and then he let himself drown. He let his body sink down into the mud and left it there to become fish food and then bone and then dust, and he walked out of the Zen garden to his car for the last time.

\---

A strange calm settled over him after that. It stayed with him the whole drive back and while he sat at his laptop to do the research required to find Cole Anderson. It stayed with him while he called to brief Derek Myers on the plan. Then he circled through his apartment in careful movements, gathering everything he needed. The mechanics of it were simple. His laptop. His cell phone, although he’d have to dismantle it immediately after the act. His ledger. And, after a brief moment of hesitation, the code book from inside his safe.

He didn’t need it, personally, and if anyone opened up the safe and found it missing, they’d know in a second what he had done. But Connor was going to die, and he had to make sure the ledger was readable if he wanted to take the Stern Family with him.

He took out the gun he never used and he loaded it. Into his bag went extra cartridges. He found all the cash he had stashed in the apartment and added it to the bag. He double checked, then triple checked, that he had everything on his list.

Then he called Amanda to update her on the plan. His voice, somehow, was still steady as he talked about the daycare, that odd calm hanging about him like a fog. “It’s all been arranged,” he concluded.

“Very good,” Amanda said, and she almost sounded pleased. For a second Connor believed things were settled, and then she said, “I’ll be sending you with a lookout and a getaway driver.”

Connor kept his voice carefully calm and asked the question as though the distinction was purely academic. “Do you think we’ll need one?” he asked, “I thought we’d be better served by being discrete.”

“Consider it a matter of safety,” she said.

“Alright,” Connor acquiesced only because he felt he had no choice. When she hung up his heart was pounding and the calm was gone. With only Derek Meyers to account for the matter was simple. To get out, with Cole, past two other men…

It was dangerous. It was always going to be dangerous. Connor had already determined he was going to die. He needed to get Cole past them, but if he failed, the boy was technically no worse off than if Connor had done nothing.

He breathed out. But his nerves were alight again and he circled the apartment to calm himself. He fed the fish for the last time, knuckles pressed against the glass. He went around and touched all the photos, trying to commit them to memory.

He went into his desk and dug deep beneath the papers in the drawers and found an old business card, yellowed with time, the edges crinkled. He slid it into his wallet like a charm.

Then Connor went back into the bedroom, into the drawer of his nightstand. Into the wood box. He picked up his birth mother’s pearl ring and he turned it over in his hands, but he put it back. It belonged to Nines, now. Next to it was the bullet, nothing more than a lump of mushroomed metal where it had impacted his rib. It had only been a fracture.  _ Lucky _ , the doctor had said.

They’d given him the bullet. Or rather, the doctor had tried to hand it to Nines in a little plastic bag in an attempt to get him to lift his face from where he was curled in the plastic hospital chair at the bedside. Nines had recoiled, had refused to even look at it, so Connor had taken it, and later when Amanda was out in the hall talking to the doctor he let Nines hop up on the bed like he wasn’t supposed to and had taken it back out.

Nines had withdrawn again, but Connor had pulled him back. “I’m fine,” he’d promised, “Are you sure you don’t want it?”

“It hurt you,” Nines had said, watching it like it would bite him, and how strange it was these days to think of a Nines who was afraid of bullets.

“I’ll keep it, then.” Connor had put it away. “You know why?”

“Why?”

“To remind me how much I love you,” Connor had said, matter-of-factly. “Anything that ever tries to hurt you is going to have to get through me first. And I won’t let it. I didn’t let it. I promise I won’t let anything happen to you, ever.”

Nines had looked at him with shining eyes, and every so often after that had asked if Connor still had it. He’d stopped asking some years back, but Connor sometimes still heard the dull thud of the nightstand drawer when Nines went into the bedroom to look.

The bullet was heavy in his hand now. Nines was alive, and whole. Connor had never let anything happen to him in the physical sense. But he’d still failed.

_ I’m so fucking sorry, _ he thought, and he closed his hand around the bullet and brought it with him. It was silly. It was maybe even selfish, to hold onto the token of a promise he wasn’t keeping.

But Connor couldn’t bring himself to let go.

Then, with everything that he needed in hand, he locked up the apartment and left.

\---

Everything between the apartment and the school played out like a movie Connor was watching. He and Derek Myers were in the backseat, Amanda’s driver and her lookout in the front. Connor eyed them carefully, memorizing their faces, their heights. If he had to shoot into the car, he wanted to know where to aim. His gun had six bullets. He’d be down a shot after Derek, but maybe he could reload between then and leaving the school. No, that was impractical—what did he plan to do with an extra bullet, anyway? Better to not get into a shootout at all.

But if he did, would the bullet make a difference?

Overthinking. Connor caught himself at it as his hand fisted in the fabric of his jacket, and he forced himself to relax. Planning was easier for Connor than doing, but things would change in the execution of even the best-laid plot. He’d done what he could. He needed to stay calm.

Luckily, no one in the car seemed to notice his nerves, or else they just put it down to a quirk of Connor’s typical demeanor. He knew that there were people in the Stern Family who doubted he was fit to follow in Amanda’s footsteps.  _ Too nervous _ , they thought.  _ Unwilling to do the hard thing _ .

They were wrong about that, but they weren’t wrong about his suitability for following Amanda. They just didn’t know how  _ right _ they were yet.

They parked in the back alley, behind the school. No security cameras at the alley entrance, although they’d surely been caught quite a few times on the way here and would be again at the school gate. Not Connor’s problem. He put his backpack on and followed Derek casually. There was a sign on the back gate warning visitors to check in with the front office, and the gate was locked, but it was easy to hop the wall. So much for security.

Up through the field and then the blacktop. Past the playground. There were a few children playing on it. Connor avoided looking at them. 

“Room 16,” he said quietly. “It’s this way.”

Connor led the way right up until they got to the door, and then he took a step back and let Derek go in first. He went in. Through the gap between his body and the doorframe Connor could see the teacher look up and smile, and mark the exact millisecond her expression changed to a look of horror.

“Which one is Cole Anderson?” Myers barked.

“I don’t—“ she spotted the gun and paled. Connor stepped inside the doorway, keeping a careful watch on his sightlines. His gun was still hidden under his coat. “I don’t know anyone named Cole Anderson.”

That was quick thinking, but Myers wasn’t fooled. “We know he’s here,” he said, “Tell us or I’ll shoot every one of them.”

Connor had been scanning the classroom and he spotted Cole. He’d seen a photograph. The boy was small—he’d forgotten how small six-year-olds were—and blond. There was a bit of a family resemblance to the Lieutenant.

The teacher trembled. “There. He’s—in the blue shirt.”

“Him?” Myers gestured broadly at Cole with the gun. Then he aimed it.

Then Connor took his hand, curled around his own gun, out of his jacket and fired.

The shot went right through the back of Myers’ skull and, Connor guessed, embedded in his brain, because nothing came out the other side. The man fell to the ground. The teacher and several of the kids screamed. Connor holstered his gun and went straight to Cole and picked him up. It was a weird sense of deja-vu. 

It reminded him of carrying Nines.

No one moved to stop him. Cole twisted in his arms. “Who—“

“I’m saving your life,” Connor said, already partway through the door, “You have to come with me.”

Cole stilled. Connor hadn’t expected it to be so easy, but he took the opportunity to shift his grip. “Arms around my neck,” he ordered, and Cole obeyed. Connor had one arm under Cole, leaving his other hand free for the gun. “I need you to be quiet. Can you do that?”

“Yes,” said Cole, into his ear.

If he’d been able to choose, Connor would have gone out another entrance, but any other path would require him to walk straight through the school, putting him on every security camera in the hallway. Having the day care in the back classroom had made getting in easier, but it meant the best way out was the way he came in.

Across the blacktop. Across the field. He was lucky the gate opened from the inside, because he wasn’t sure how he could hop the wall with Cole. But there was the car. The men Amanda had sent. Had she truly thought it was best? Or had she somehow known?

Once out of the gate, Connor broke into a run. It didn’t help. He heard rather than saw the car start up and the gunshot fly past. “Fuck,” he breathed, and he spun and fired. The shot hit the driver’s side window instead of the windshield, which meant it actually shattered the glass, but the answering shot seemed to indicate he hadn’t killed the driver. He fired twice more—again through the window, easier since it was speeding towards them and the glass was shot out, and then into the left front tire.

The car skidded right, striking a telephone pole, and Connor ran.

“Are you hurt?” he asked. He’d thought his body was between Cole and the bullets, but if he was wrong it didn’t bear thinking about.

“No,” Cole’s voice was small. Connor rounded a corner, already breathing hard. He was a good runner, but jogging five miles was a very different prospect than sprinting with a child in tow and a heavy backpack. He’d thought Cole was little, looking at him, but now he was wishing he was even smaller.

He made it three blocks and down an alley before he allowed himself to slow to a walk. His lungs ached. So did the arm carrying Cole. He kept going anyway. He had two bullets left. He needed to reload. He needed to sit down and breathe, but he couldn’t afford to stop and do either until he knew they were clear.

“Who were they?” Cole demanded. Connor shifted the boy higher up onto his hip and kept walking, glancing periodically over his shoulder. Listening for the sound of a car.

“They’re bad men,” Connor told him.  _ And so am I _ , he didn’t say. There was no point in scaring the kid.

“So you saved me,” Cole breathed, “Who are you?”

“A friend of your dad’s,” Connor said. That was also a lie, and not even by omission. It was fair to say that Hank Anderson might have liked him better than anyone else in the Stern family, but that didn’t make them friends. It was possible Hank might count Connor as a friend after tonight, if he could get Cole to safety, but Connor also fully expected to be dead after tonight, so it wasn’t something he would bank on.

“Did he send you to save me?” Cole demanded, too loud.

“Shh,” Connor said. “We have to be quiet.”

“Did he?” Cole repeated, quieter.

“Sort of,” Connor said.

“Like in the Terminator,” Cole said, nodding. “‘ _ Come with me if you want to live _ .”

“You are far too young to have seen that movie,” Connor said.

“You’re Kyle Reese,” announced Cole. “Was that guy the Terminator?”

“No,” Connor said. “I think that’s someone else.” 

He had no illusions about who would be coming after him. Nines was the best assassin Amanda had. The job would double as a way for him to prove his loyalty. And Nines  _ was _ loyal. Not like Connor, the traitor.

His little brother would get a kick out of being compared to the Terminator, Connor thought. Maybe he could tell him before Nines shot him in the face.

“We need to do a few things,” Connor told Cole. “Then I’m going to get you somewhere safe.”

“Okay,” Cole said.

Connor kept going until they hit the train station, where he set Cole down and took off his backpack, pulling out the cell phone. He pulled out the sim card and crushed it under his shoe, and then he hurled the body of the phone onto the roof of the train as it passed.

“Is that so they can’t track us?” Cole asked, startling Connor.

“Yeah,” Connor said, exhaling heavily. “That’s right.”

“That’s so cool,” Cole said.

It was lucky that Cole hadn’t caught up to the amount of danger he was in, Connor thought. How close to death he’d come in the past ten minutes. Luckier still that Cole had decided to trust him. He would never have made it this far if the kid had fought him.

They had to get off the streets before anything else. Connor had to be sure that Amanda was off his trail before he could bring Cole anywhere, and he had to be sure that he was bringing him somewhere safe. Law enforcement wasn’t a guarantee that they weren’t on Amanda’s payroll. Luckily, Connor was in a good position to know who he could trust—unluckily, the list was short.

Obscure the trail first. Deliver Cole to safety. Then do everything he could to tear down the Family before his brother caught up with him.

“Are you okay to walk for now?” Connor asked.

“Yes,” Cole said.

“It might be a long way,” Connor said.

“I can do it,” Cole promised.

Connor held out his hand and Cole took it. “Don’t let go,” he warned.

“I won’t,” said Cole.

It wasn’t everything he’d imagined as a kid, not even close. It was frightening, his muscles ached, the bullet felt heavy in his pocket when he thought about what he was giving up. But he was doing the right thing. The right thing, finally.

The Connor Stern lying at the bottom of the river might have smiled.  _ This _ one adjusted to the feeling of a child’s hand in his and walked, inexorably, onward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you can, please leave a comment--they mean a lot!
> 
> This fic originated from the Detroit: New Era Discord, and now it has a channel on there if you want to talk to other people reading, exchange theories, ask me questions or get updates on how the writing's going! There's lots of great people and other great fics there as well, so please come join us: <https://discord.gg/GqvNzUm>
> 
> Plus, I'm [catalists](http://catalists.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr and [Chrome](http://pillowfort.io/Chrome/) on Pillowfort, come find me!

**Author's Note:**

> If you can leave a comment, please do; they honestly mean the world (and inspire me to keep writing...).
> 
> I'm [catalists](http://catalists.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr and [Chrome](http://pillowfort.io/Chrome/) on Pillowfort, come find me!


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